Several citizens upcountry have decried the time it costs to procure national identification cards with the the responsible agency in Kigali. 

Speaking to The New Times, the citizens said the National Identification Agency (NIDA) would do citizens a lot more services by taking its desks to the grassroots.

Jean Claude Manizabayo, a senior six student from Rubavu District, said decentralising NIDA services would help upcountry citizens like himself save time and money spent on coming to Kigali to process IDs.

"I spent six days here in Kigali waiting for an ID without success. I was asked to go back to my sector for a letter, which, apparently, I had not carried,” Manizabayo said.

"On return, I had to hang around for a week to get my ID. Throughout these days; I slept in Nyabugogo taxi park because I did not have enough money to lodge with.”

Jean Bosco Barandora, 30, from Gicumbi District, said he came to correct his ID card since it identified him as a female.

"The service is okay here but there are too many people in the queue. I understand the office is short of manpower, so it would be worthwhile to open offices at provincial levels so those from upcountry don’t have to come to Kigali,” Barandora said.

Dieudonne Menego Kariba, the head of the department of identification production, acknowledges the problem, saying the concerns are genuine and the suggestion plausible.

"We have only failed to decentralise our service because of lack of adequate machines to produce ID cards to distribute to the grassroots,” Kariba said.

He said the agency was working on procuring more machines to facilitate the implementation of decentralised services, adding that by next year, NIDA would have made tremendous progress in that regard.

"Some of the few services like declarations of the missing, tardy or flawed ID cards, among others, will be done in the sectors starting next year,” Kiraba said.

There are 416 sectors countrywide.

He said NIDA is considering having offices at the grassroots handle documents verification so that the headquarters in Kigali would then process the IDs and send them back to respective upcountry offices from where owners would collect them.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw